"Is just me, or was Faith all of the sudden kind of a grown-up and not that crazy little kid we loved in s3?"
I thought she went the opposite, tbh. All the painstaking character development we'd seen in the Angel Faithisodes just got frisbeed out the window. It's like they had this massive big character profile for her, and somebody said "you know if we make her that textured and interesting we'll lose out on more Buffy speechin' time."
"SHRIEK!" cried the speech monkey. "We needs all the precious speechin' time! Just stick a highlighter on a few of her most obvious character points and run with them"
"Okay! We got... 'She's randy' 'she likes fighting!' 'She has a ____/hate relationship with Buffy' "
"You've skipped an important part of th-"
"Shut up! Moving on, 'She's "street'! 'She likes tight t shirts'.."
"Ooh, lets take advantage of that. Cameraman, I never want to see any part above Dushku's chin, is that clear?" 'Buffy feels provoked into a fight"
"Wait, isn't that an old one? Wouldn't it be completely reprehensibly appalling of Buffy to be the aggressor, now that she knows how much Faith has sacrificed to be a good guy?"
"I couldn't hear you over the implosion of Jill's soul, what was that?"
And despite all that, she was still the highlight of S7.